


Can I Get There By Candlelight?

by Nightdog_Barks



Category: Stargate Atlantis
Genre: Alien Culture, Aliens, Drama, Gen, Mystery, Rescue
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2008-03-31
Updated: 2008-03-31
Packaged: 2017-10-18 05:20:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,589
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/185468
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nightdog_Barks/pseuds/Nightdog_Barks
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The map of Rodney is a chart John knows how to read.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Can I Get There By Candlelight?

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you, [](http://perspi.livejournal.com/profile)[**perspi**](http://perspi.livejournal.com/), for the encouragement and nudging to get this finished. 1,488 words.

_**_SG:A_ Ficlet: Can I Get There By Candlelight?**_  
 **STATUS:** Crossposted to [](http://gate-house.livejournal.com/profile)[**gate_house**](http://gate-house.livejournal.com/) and [](http://mckay-sheppard.livejournal.com/profile)[**mckay_sheppard**](http://mckay-sheppard.livejournal.com/) on 3/31/08.  
 **TITLE:** Can I Get There By Candlelight?  
 **AUTHOR:** [](http://nightdog-writes.livejournal.com/profile)[**nightdog_writes**](http://nightdog-writes.livejournal.com/)  
 **CHARACTERS:** Team, Carson Beckett, gen. Unless you're reading with slash goggles, in which case it's McShep.  
 **RATING:** PG-13.  
 **WARNINGS:** None.  
 **SPOILERS:** No.  
 **SUMMARY:** The map of Rodney is a chart John knows how to read.  
 **DISCLAIMER:** Don't own 'em. Never will.  
 **AUTHOR NOTES:** Thank you, [](http://perspi.livejournal.com/profile)[**perspi**](http://perspi.livejournal.com/) , for the encouragement and nudging to get this finished. 1,488 words.  
 **BETA:** My intrepid First Readers, with especial thanks to [](http://bironic.livejournal.com/profile)[**bironic**](http://bironic.livejournal.com/) and [](http://deelaundry.livejournal.com/profile)[**deelaundry**](http://deelaundry.livejournal.com/).

 **Can I Get There By Candlelight?**

  
Blue eyes, John thinks, even as his frantic fingers are trying to unknot the gag tied so tightly at the back of Rodney's head. The Sky God has blue eyes.

The gag comes free at last, but there's more -- the natives have stuffed a wad of something -- leather? cloth? -- into Rodney's mouth, and that's got to come out too. All the while he can hear Teyla trying to make the villagers understand that this is _their_ Sky God, and they can't sacrifice him. Ronon's rumbling something, saying what Teyla won't -- that you people are fucking savages, burning people alive to please your idiot gods.

If it hadn't been for Ronon -- and John's thoughts are uncharacteristically scattering like pinballs and he has to get them back on track **now** \-- if it hadn't been for Ronon pulling the cover back from that Rodney-shaped bundle hidden in the back of the hut. If there'd been just a little less light in the hut. If the natives had covered Rodney with a little more mud. If they hadn't kidnapped two scientists already. If Rodney hadn't been able to open his eyes ...

"Come on, Sheppard," Ronon says.

"Working as fast as I can, big guy," John mutters, because he's just discovered that the villagers have hog-tied their Sky God to keep him from kicking at the blanket. Rodney's hands are bound tightly behind his back, his legs crooked so that a loop of rope secures his ankles to his wrists. "Damn it," he says, beginning to slice through the restraints as quickly as he can. The dried mud crumbles away in granular, gritty clods. "Don't worry, Rodney, we're gonna have you out of here in no time."

Rodney doesn't answer; his eyes have slid closed again and that's a bad sign because normally Rodney wants to observe everything, to take charge, to be the traffic cop.

The last of the ropes falls free.

"Let's go," John says, and they do.

It's not until they're back in the jumper and Teyla is gently cleaning the mud from Rodney's face that they discover underneath all that loamy crud, Rodney is now black.

* * *

"It's paint," Carson says.

"If it's _paint_ , why won't it come off with soap and water?" John demands. "Or bleach? Or acetone? Or anything else we've tried?"

"I don't know!" Carson's tone is testy. He sighs and visibly composes himself. "It's some special compound the natives use for their sacrificial victims. Rodney's not the only one who was taken -- I've got Dr. Kelly painted green, they were going to bury her alive as an offering to some sort of harvest god. They colored Dr. Sandstrom blue -- he was about to be ritually _drowned_." Carson pauses, and both men look over to where Rodney lies sedated, still and quiet on the infirmary bed.

"Some of it's begun flaking off already," he offers. "He's not allergic to it -- frankly, if he was he'd be in much worse shape -- and I'm not inclined to go scrubbing Rodney to a raw pulp just to get a little paint off."

"A _little_ paint, doc?"

"Well ... yes, a _lot_ of paint."

John shakes his head. He's read the field reports -- the captives had been stripped and tied to posts in the center of the village, while the priests chanted over them and slathered every inch of their naked bodies with the sacramental paint.

 _Every_ inch.

"It's not hurting him, John," Carson says gently. "We just have to wait for it to wear off naturally. Rodney does need to rest, though -- all his scans were clean, but he still sustained a pretty good blow to the head when they made off with him."

John wills himself to relax and rolls his shoulders to relieve some of the tension.

"I guess you're right," he says, and allows Carson to lead him towards the infirmary door, where the doctor flicks the switch that will dim the lights over Rodney's bed. He glances back into the infirmary. "Still, you'll call me if -- "

John stops, dead in his tracks.

"What is it?" Carson follows John's gaze. "Oh, holy hell."

Rodney is _glowing_.

* * *

It takes John a little while to realize what it is, after the initial panic that Rodney is somehow going to spontaneously combust has worn off.

At first the designs on Rodney's body remind him of petroglyphs -- spirals and lines and dots and whorls. When Carson removes the sheet covering Rodney's nakedness, the designs light up, illuminating the dark with a steady, cold blue fire.

"Bio-luminescent," Carson murmurs. "Their version of lightning bugs, cave fungus, who knows. They must have used it to draw the patterns in the black paint while it was still wet." He traces one of the lines, delicately following it from its starting point at Rodney's left nipple, all the way up to where it ends in an exploding starburst ring in the hollow of Rodney's throat.

The starburst throbs with nuclear life in time with Rodney's pulse, and when Carson lifts his fingertip away it too carries a faintly sulphereous match-glow. He frowns at the cool phosphorescence.

"It's breaking down. Why now? It didn't wash off with the mud -- "

 _Because it's fairy dust,_ John thinks, and resists the urge to giggle uncontrollably. _Have to get Ronon in here to see this._ While he doubts Ronon would have much interest in Tinkerbell, he's willing to wager Ronon has met more than a few Captain Hooks in his years on the run.

 _And who knows? Ronon might like the story -- the lost boys, first star to the left --_

And just like that, the pattern emerges. It had been there the whole time.

"Star charts," John says.

Carson looks up from where he's been tracking a particularly bright blob across Rodney's right kneecap.

"No, see, look." John's excited as he describes the sky atlas the natives inked onto Rodney's body. "Comets, suns, planets. Spiral galaxies, constellations, asteroid belts." He points at the knee blob. "A supernova." And then he's silent for a moment, remembering the first time he'd realized the distance between the stars was something that could be measured, and if the calculations added up, and the right compass was at hand, someone could sail to those stars.

 _He_ could sail to those stars. The distance of Rodney, from head to toe, parsecs and luminosity, standard candles and Tully-Fisher relations. From the galactic clouds blooming on the ball of his right foot to the barred spirals circling his left shoulder, a quadrillion billion miles.

"A pretty present for their sky god," Carson mutters, and John's spell is broken. "Burn a man alive, send him up like a blazing meteor."

"Yeah," John says, and brushes at one of the nebulae on Rodney's chest with his own finger.

The luminescent ink smears; the tiny galaxy is destroyed, and all that is left behind is the faint glow of fairy dust on John's hand.

* * *

"They drew pictures on me with _what?"_

"Bug juice," John replies cheerfully. "Or maybe it was cave mold, Carson never really got a chance to find out."

"Oh, _God,"_ Rodney moans, and slides a little further down in his infirmary bed. His face and arms, uncovered by his worn grey t-shirt, glow pink as if from a light sunburn.

"Hey, at least the paint wore off sooner than anybody expected." John knows that Carson is still puzzling over that one -- before anyone in the infirmary had had time to grab a camera or check the other patients for similar patterns, the paint on all three had begun peeling off in curling, brittle sheets that fell to the floor in drifts and immediately disintegrated to a fine, ashy powder.

In Rodney's case, it had taken the mystery of the "fairy dust" with it.

"Oh, yeah, like that's supposed to be a _good_ thing. It had already been on my body, soaking who knows what kind of _poisons_ into my pores, for almost twenty-four hours!" Rodney's hands are in the air, waving and slashing and pointing. "And after that those morons smeared me with _mud!_ Which was probably _crawling_ with microbes!"

"Microbes don't crawl, Rodney."

"It doesn't matter. Mud is dirt, and dirt is ... "

"Dirty?"

"Ha ha." Rodney sulks for a moment. John turns another page in his book.

"So, galaxies, huh?"

"Mmm hmm."

"Well. That's kind of ... cool, isn't it?"

John glances up. "They were gonna burn you at the stake, Rodney, but yeah, that was cool."

Rodney's mouth quirks up, and he pulls his laptop closer. John reads for a while longer as Rodney works, then gets up and wanders out onto a nearby balcony. He squints.

The sun is bright today, bright on the dark blue Lantean waves, and where the horizon ends and the ocean becomes sky is anyone's guess.

~ the end.

  
 _How many miles to Babylon?  
Three-score miles and ten.  
Can I get there by candle-light?  
Yes, and back again._  
~ children's rhyme


End file.
